#CAD
Yes, the Apple plotter was discontinued some time age (an Apple owner told me
that there really wasn't any good software for it until _after_ Apple decided
the sales were too low and yanked it). For a long time, the plotter was
advertised at about $150 by California Digital, in the back pages of Byte. I
got mine from a different place for even less, but they are definitely out of
them. So, getting pens is also a problem if you don't have a big stash.
I think that there just isn't enough interest in plotters at the "low end" to
make them a good marketing proposition. The Epson plotter might have been
relatively popular as plotters go, but probably had miniscule sales in
comparison to most any Epson dot matrix printer.
If you can find a good used HP plotter, you might be better off in terms of
support and pens – but that will still run you over $500 unless you find a real
bargain.
The future of A to C size pen plotters is in real doubt, as they will likely
be replaced by raster printers with specialized vector-to-raster conversion
routines. A good example of this is a printer/plotter made by JDL, which
emulates HPGL plotters and does FAST plots up to C size. I'd like one of those
maybe even more that an HP pen plotter, but it costs over $2K.
Good luck finding a solution!
Joel